Websites Part 3: Website Function

So, once youâ€™ve written effective copy for your website, and created a great website design, you have a very nice online brochure. The next step in creating an effective website is to make the site work for you â€“ to add in some function.

What can you do to make your site more functional? Well, two major functions that every site should do are:

1. Encourage and enable your customers to contact you through calls-to-action and by providing a contact form or email address

2. Get you a good ranking in the search engines and enable you to get found by prospects searching for you.

The functionality of a site often relates directly to the job that youâ€™d like your site to do. And, what you want your site to do is often solidly based on your business and marketing strategy.

Besides the two jobs listed above, there are a lot of other jobs that your site can do. Iâ€™ll list them out in the next post, along with my suggestions on how to accomplish them. But, first, a word of caution.

Itâ€™s tempting to try to immediately create a website that does EVERYTHING. But, I donâ€™t recommend that you start by trying to make your website do every possible job â€“ youâ€™ll create a giant, monster of a site that will take you forever to finish.

When youâ€™re creating your first website, I recommend paying a lot of attention to the content and design. And, be sure that it does the first two jobs above. And, then, I recommend that you pick one â€“ or possibly two â€“ functions for your first site to focus on.

By concentrating your efforts in this way, youâ€™ll be able to get a site put up quickly and with a reasonable amount of effort.

And, youâ€™ll be able to focus on making your site really effective in one department â€“ instead of trying to accomplish a lot of goals at once and not being effective on any one.